Monday, April 30, 2012

So little is known about North Korea, it has earned the
nickname “The Hermit Kingdom.” Thanks to Michael DiTanna, we know a smidge more
about the country, or at least its approach to the Internet.

As part of an assignment for The Two Koreas, a course taught by Yufeng Mao, Ph.D., assistant visting professor of history, DiTanna,
a junior majoring in computer science at Fordham College at Rose Hill, was
asked to analyze the content of North Korean official media.

“Immediately after visiting the site I noticed the website
used some common open source web elements — specifically the main image
banner,” DiTanna told Wired Magazine’s Danger Room blog. Noticing the
“envatowebdesign” marker “gave away the template’s source,” he said.

DiTanna was able to locate the correct template and note its
price, a rather unimpressive $15.

“I had to
present on this in class and everyone was pretty shocked,” he told the
magazine.

The blog noted that a keyword search for “envatowebdesign”
brings a prompt from the seller of the theme —Ignite Themes—on how to customize
it, but whoever designed it in Pyongyang didn’t even bother.

“It’s a bit like leaving the plastic overlay on your fancy
new TV telling you about the screen size,” they note.

Since the Danger Room blog was posted on April 18, DiTanna has
been bombarded by requests for comment from, by his estimate, 10-15 reporters
and bloggers daily. The World and the BBC even visited campus to interview him
for stories.

“I wasn't surprised it got some attention from tech circles,
but I was surprised when mainstream media picked it up,” he said.

“It was tied in only because of how much North Korea was in
the news lately and the article was related to North Korean budgeting
and "other blunders."

Alas, DiTanna said he’s received no word from North Korea on
its choice of Ignite Themes’ Blender style web page theme.

Friday, April 27, 2012

An interdisciplinary panel met in the South Lounge of Lowenstein on April 19 to discuss new issues resulting from the changing demographic in urban New York.

Constance Rosenblum, The New York Times columnist, moderated the discussion.

Joseph Salvo, director of the Population Division at the New York City Department of City Planning, discussed the shift in the demographic makeup of each New York City borough in terms of age and race or ethnicity. He described New York as having an “ebb and flow” of people in which, through migration and immigration, the city replenishes itself.

Since the recession, though, more people are arriving to the city than leaving.

“Because, where are you gonna go? Florida? Arizona?” Salvo said.

According to Salvo, this influx of migrants consists of young, highly educated adults trying to establish careers.

In addition, each neighborhood’s racial and ethnic demographic has shifted. Harlem is losing its black residents to suburbanization.

“Where are the Asians? Not in Chinatown!” Salvo quipped, they are moving to Bensonhurst and Queens. Dominicans are moving out of Washington Heights, while Mexicans are moving in. Staten Island and Brooklyn are seeing increases in Puerto Rican residents.

Alyshia Glavez, Ph.D., associate professor of anthropology at Lehman College, City University of New York, discussed the deportation of more than 400,000 immigrants per year over the past three years. Many deportees are parents who become separated from their American children, she said. These children are then put into foster care and may be adopted.

The Dream Act is a “miserable piece of legislature,” according to Galvez, because it merely helps with the Tuition Assistance Program, rather than changing the status of undocumented students. The legislation would increase taxes by $1.39.

“I spent more than $1.39 at Starbucks on my way here,” Galvez said, illustrating how minor the tax increase would be.

Neil Smith, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, discussed the Occupy movement and gentrification, the restoration of decaying urban areas by more affluent people. He said that today our futures are radically open because the crises experienced over the last decade has given the right and left an opportunity to exert change.

According to Smith, Occupy shook ideas of capitalism and caught the elite off guard, as shown by the response of Bloomberg and the NYPD to the occupation of Zuccotti Park.

In addition, gentrification isn’t accidentally happening anymore when a street or house needs repair, Smith said. Now there’s systematic and planned rezoning to gentrify neighborhoods. These residential areas are then integrated with recreational facilities to generate capital.

Setha Low, Ph.D., professor of anthropology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, discussed middle class residential creation of space through securitization and gated communities.

While some consider gated communities a thing of the past, Low said there are six in Queens and two in Brooklyn. In addition, co-op buildings, because they are secure and private, function as modern gated communities.

When asked about co-op buildings, most residents replied that they feel safer due to the presence of a doorman and financial vetting. Some said they think the application process is racist, because co-op boards ask questions such as “Do you cook ethnic foods that could be offensive?” The application process reinforces social and racial segregation.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Shortly after the Spring 2012 issue of FORDHAM magazine was on its way to readers, we were saddened to learn that
Pete Fornatale, FCRH ’67—legendary DJ and rock historian, subject of our “Seven Questions” feature—suffered a fatal stroke. He died on April 26.

Pete Fornatale’s voice always brings me back to my childhood.

I grew up in northern New Jersey during the 1980s, the youngest of three
brothers. At home, in the car, the radio was always on—and certain voices
(other than our parents’) were omnipresent.

The two I can conjure today with the greatest clarity and fondness, the two
heard so often they seemed to emanate from the walls of our home, belong to New
York Yankees broadcaster Phil Rizzuto and Fordham’s own Pete Fornatale, FCRH
’67.

But they weren’t just voices; they were personalities and companions.

I could sense that Pete Fornatale lived and loved and truly cared about the
music he played. To my adolescent ears, his voice on the air was always
assured, sunny, friendly, funny, and—above all—knowledgeable.

When I first heard him, he was already well into his career at WNEW-FM, the
station where in the late ’60s and early ’70s he and his fellow DJs were at the
heart of a revolution in popular music and culture. Not only did he play the
tunes I loved (thanks to my brothers’ expansive record collection) and others
I’d soon grow to love, but he also interviewed the artists and imparted a
generous passion for the music that nurtured my own enthusiasm.

As a kid, I’d scour the liner notes of classic albums by the Who, the Beatles,
and the Rolling Stones, among many others, but I’d always learn something more
from listening to Mixed Bag with Pete
Fornatale. He’d talk about the making of this or that record and, perhaps best
of all, he would find and share connections among albums and artists and what
was happening in the world at the time. That approach informed and delighted me
and kept me guessing what he’d play next.

In 1989, Fornatale left WNEW-FM for K-Rock, and I (and many other music fans)
followed him there. Then Fornatale followed me—or so I like to think. In
February 2001, about six months after I started working at Fordham, he brought
his Mixed Bag to WFUV, Fordham’s
noncommercial, listener-supported radio station.

(In truth, he returned to his roots. In November 1964, when Fornatale was a
sophomore at Fordham, he created Campus
Caravan, WFUV’s first rock and roll show, the show that would grow up to
become Mixed Bag.)

On a Saturday afternoon this past February, soon after the AFTRA Foundation
honored Fornatale with its 2012 award for excellence in broadcasting, I took
the opportunity to interview him at WFUV for a Q-and-A article in the spring
issue of FORDHAM magazine.

It was Presidents Day Weekend, and he was getting ready to broadcast his show,
which would include an hour’s worth of music for “the common man—the people who
are the inheritors of the day off on Monday.” I congratulated him on winning
the AFTRA award, then told him—by way of introduction—about the connection I’d
made between his voice and Phil Rizzuto’s, two of the most indelible from my
childhood.

“I think it’s one of the things I enjoy most,” he said, “because it’s so easy
to be forgotten and yesterday’s news in broadcasting. To have sort of planted a
flag in people’s hearts and kept it there is a real thrill.”

We spoke about his early days on the air at Fordham, and how grateful and
pleased he was to have brought his career full circle.

“Right from the beginning,” he told me, his shows were designed to “take a
listener on a trip by playing a series of songs together that built up steam
and took them somewhere.”

He added: “I’m always trying to put together music or concepts or themes in a
way that if a person is listening to me in the car and they get to where
they’re going—the mall, the restaurant, or even their own driveway—they won’t
get out of the car until the end of the set because they want to take it to its
natural conclusion.

“When people write that to me, that’s one of those recurring affirming notions
that tells me that I’m on the right track and that I should keep doing this
even after all these years.”

When I asked him about his seminal days at WNEW-FM, he shared a story that, he
admitted, gives him “a little sadness.”

Sometime around 1970, when he was the new kid on the block, a reporter wrote a
feature story about the station and its on-air personalities for The New York Times Magazine. “In the
piece, he said, WNEW-FM is a family,” Fornatale recalled. “And let me see if I
got this right: Rosko was the soul, Scott Muni was the heart, Jonathan Schwartz
was the intellect, Alison Steele was the femininity, Zacherley was the
eccentricity, and I was the youth.

“Now my two bits of sadness attached to that are: the article never ran, number
one. And number two, today, Rosko could still be the soul, Scott could still be
the heart, Jonathan could still be the intellect, Alison could still be the
femininity, Zach could still be the eccentricity,” he said, his voice rising in
pitch and volume, “but there’s no f---ing way that I could be the youth! That’s
a bummer.”

I laughed with him but begged to differ: what about that timeless couplet from
Bob Dylan’s “My Back Pages”: “Ah, but I was so much older then/I’m younger than
that now.” Did he feel that way?

“Oh, well, there’s some truth to that,” he said, especially considering his
full-circle trip back to WFUV.

Now, as I recall Pete Fornatale’s voice coming to me through the black plastic
boombox in the bedroom of my childhood, I hear his ever-youthful enthusiasm,
his rock and roll wisdom, and his easy laugh.

And I’m reminded of the prayerful words to another Dylan song:May you build a ladder to the stars
and climb on every rung
May you stay forever youngPlay it loud and listen.

Monday, April 23, 2012

Lawrence Kramer, Ph.D., built a distinguished scholarly
career around the relationship between his two passions, music and literature.
So it was only a matter of time before he would come up with the idea for the
event that will be held Saturday, April 28 at the Lincoln Center campus.

He was chatting with colleagues about the University’s Poets
Out Loud program a few years ago when the conversation turned to music. “This
sort of light bulb went on in my head,” said Kramer, Distinguished Professor in
the Department of English.

The result was a series of concerts that combine poetry
readings with performances of the poems’ musical versions. The third annual
event in the series, Voices Up: New Music for New Poetry, will be held at 7:30
p.m.in the 12th-Floor Lounge of the Lowenstein Building. The concert
was organized in conjunction with Poets Out Loud. Admission is free.

The event will feature original works by several
prize-winning artists. A cellist, violinist and vocalist will perform new works
by composers Paul Moravec—winner of the Pulitzer Prize—and David Dzubay, who
wrote music for poems by Julie Choffel. Choffel, a member of the faculty at the
University of Connecticut, will read from her book The Hello Delay, published
by Fordham University Press. The book was the winner of the Poets Out Loud book
competition for 2012.

The accompanying music will be performed by violinist
Madalyn Parnas, cellist Cicely Parnas, and soprano Sharon Harms, all of whom
are students at Indiana University, where David Dzubay teaches. Because their lineup includes the premiere of a piece by Kramer, who is a
prize-winning composer, he will read the poetry he wrote as the song's lyrics. In addition, a work by Hungarian composer Gyorgy Kurtag, comprising fragments from the work
of Franz Kafka, will be performed.

This year’s event departs from the standard voice-and-piano
format of classical song. The combination of violin, cello and voice “creates
all kinds of interesting possibilities, which we’re eager to explore,” Kramer
said.

He noted that the event belongs to a centuries-long
tradition of marrying poetry with music. He cited the example of prolific composer
Franz Schubert, an avid reader of poetry and friend of many poets, who wrote
his songs using their poems as lyrics as soon as they were published.

“That’s the way it works in the world of classical song,” he
said. “The idea is that you create a relationship between musical expression
and poetic expression.”

Because it can be distracting for audience members to follow the poet’s words on paper, he said, the format includes no copies of the poems. Audience members will only listen: First they will
hear the poem read, and then they will hear it sung.

“What happens is the expressive additions that come about by
putting it to music become more available to people, because they’ve heard the
poet reading the poem in the poet’s own voice,” he said. “That really has an
impact, we discovered.”

On Thursday, April 12, over 100 students representing all ten schools of the University were inducted into the Fordham chapter of Alpha Sigma Nu, the National Jesuit Honor Society, as it celebrated its 30th year on campus.

Philip A. Florio, S.J., assistant vice president for University Mission and Ministry, and Carol Gibney, associate director for Campus Ministry at Lincoln Center and director of Ignatian Programs, received Honorary Membership into the society.

Following welcoming remarks from Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, and Stephen Freedman, Ph.D., provost, Msgr. Joseph G. Quinn, vice president for University Mission and Ministry, presented the awards to each student along with the deans of the schools.

Friday, April 20, 2012

Alexandra Cinque might seem like a typical college student, battling schoolwork and conquering exams—but there’s a lot more fight to her than meets the eye.

Cinque, a sophomore at Rose Hill and a third degree black belt, recently competed against athletes from over 100 colleges at the National Collegiate Taekwondo Championships, held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

She secured the gold medal and, with it, the national title.

In May, Cinque will travel to Pocheon, South Korea to represent the United States in the World University Taekwondo Championships.

“I’m so excited about this win at collegiate nationals,” said Cinque, who has been practicing taekwondo since she was 5 years old. “I’ve won other national titles before, but this great because I actually get to represent Fordham, too.”

Her latest title joins a long list of achievements in taekwondo. Cinque, who hails from Ossining, N.Y., has been on the U.S. national team twice and in 2009 won the Pan American championships, held in El Salvador. She has also won several state, regional, national, and international competitions.

“I love taekwondo because it teaches me discipline and a great work ethic,” she said. “And although athletes compete in events individually, I love the team camaraderie and visiting new places.”

Victory, though, does not come without hard work. Cinque typically trains up to four days per week, and when a major competition is approaching, she increases her training regimen to six days per week.

“One of the most challenging parts of doing taekwondo is the sacrifice and the time needed to reach my goals,” she said. “My taekwondo school, Kixx Martial Arts, is all the way in Little Falls, N.J., and I go three days during the week and on weekends, too. It takes a huge chunk out of my day, so it’s hard to manage that plus schoolwork, a job, clubs, and a social life.”

Cinque said she also must always be mindful of her physical fitness, since competing in the middleweight group requires her to maintain a certain weight.

“It’s really hard to be in the cafeteria, on Arthur Avenue, or at Pugsley’s and not eat everything in sight,” she said.

Nevertheless, the strain and sacrifice of intense training are worth the ultimate goal.

“Besides hopefully winning… I really hope [this experience] will be another positive step toward my goal of eventually going to the Olympics,” she said.

— Joanna Klimaski

Sophomore Alex Cinque is a gold medalist in taekwondo.Photo courtesy of Alex Cinque

Friday, April 13, 2012

Three Rose Hill students have achieved a distinction coveted by science students across the country.

Stacey Barnaby, FCRH ’11, Julianne Troiano, FCRH ’11, and current senior Rebecca Triano recently won National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships. These prestigious fellowships are awarded annually to foster scientific research and support outstanding graduate students in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Fellows are awarded a three-year annual stipend of $30,000 along with $10,500 in education allowance toward the graduation institution of their choice. The allowance funds fellows’ tuition and fees, opportunities for international research and professional development, and the freedom to conduct their own research.

Since its creation in 1952, the highly competitive fellowship has been awarded to less than 9 percent of more than 500,000 applicants.

"The fellowship award is based on intellectual merit, but also the broader impact of your research," said Triano, a chemistry major. "They place emphasis on what you can do beyond the scientific community."

For Triano, that broader impact is targeted toward helping the environment. As part of her application, Triano submitted a research proposal that combined research she conducted at Fordham and the University of California, Berkeley. Working with Amy Balija, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemistry, Triano performed organic synthesis research on molecules that remove pollutants from water. Her research at UC Berkeley, meanwhile, focused on developing certain catalysts that help to convert methane into usable energy.

In her application, Triano proposed to use the molecules she develops in Balija's lab to transform methane.

“For three students to win this prestigious award from the same, small undergraduate department in a single year is truly remarkable,” said Michael Latham, Ph.D., dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill. “It also speaks to the great generosity of our faculty in supporting students in undergraduate research.”

Both Barnaby and Troiano are currently pursuing their doctorate degrees at Northwestern University. Barnaby primarily researches macromolecular, supramolecular, and nanochemistry, while Troiano researches sustainable chemistry.

Triano will begin a doctoral program in organic chemistry at UC Berkeley in the fall.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Donna Rapaccioli, Ph.D., Dean of the Gabelli School of Business and Dean of the Fordham Business Faculty, was honored by the National Italian American Foundation in a ceremony on Thursday, April 12 at Cipriani restaurant in Midtown Manhattan.

When the Gabelli School of Business holds its first undergraduate research conference on April 20 and 21st, the centerpiece of the event will be Vol. 1, No. 1 of the Fordham Business Student Research Journal.

The journal is published jointly by the deans of the Gabelli School of Business and the Graduate School of Business.

It features three articles by Gabelli students: “Countering Counterfeits: An Investigation of Message Frame and Message Focus Effects on Persuasion,” by Caroline Dahlgren; “Fund-Management-Gender Composition: The Impact on Risk & Performance of Mutual Funds and Hedge Funds” by Angela Luongo, and “The Relationship Between Socioeconomic Status and Emotional Gratification for Consumers who Purchase Overtly Branded (Overtly Designer) Goods” by Sarah Siracusa.

It also contains lists and abstracts of previously published Gabelli students’ theses, to give a broader sense of the research being done at the college. The best papers submitted to the April conference will be featured in a future issue.

Donna Rapaccioli, Ph.D., Dean of the Gabelli School of Business and Dean of the Fordham business faculty, said the impetus for the journal came last year, when several students’ research was selected for publication in academic journals that typically carry the work of full-time professors.

“This inspired us to think about how we could further extend the reach of out students’ work and share it with the wider academic community,” she said.

“I hope you find our students work as enlightening and impressive as I have.”

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

The second annual RecycleMania challenge ended on March 31 with three residence halls at Rose Hill taking top honors.

According to results released by consultant Wake Forest, Rose Hill’s Walsh Hall and Salice-Conley Hall finished the ten-week challenge in the top of the categories of most paper and cardboard, and most glass, metal and plastic, respectively. Both were in the lead on March 4, when data was last reported.

Likewise, Rose Hill’s Alumni South held on to win the title for the least amount of trash generated per person. The residents of Lincoln Center’s McMahon Hall won this category in last years’ challenge, but were out shined this year by Alumni South’s 3.29 pounds per person count. Tierney Hall generated the most trash per person, 5.61 pounds per person.

When it came to glass, metal and plastic, Salice-Conley Hall blew away the competition, recycling 1.04 pounds per person. Walsh Hall, which came in second place, recycled a mere 0.67 pounds per person. At the other end of the spectrum, Alumni South finished last, with 0.18 pounds per person.

On the south side of campus, Walsh Hall was victorious in the paper and cardboard category, managing to keep an average of a whole pound per resident out of the garbage stream. Alumni South was last in that category too, recycling 0.23 pounds per person.

This was the second year Fordham participated in RecycleMania, in the“benchmark” division of the competition, where the University did not compete with other schools, but rather pitted individual dorms against each other in a friendly competition to see who is the greenest of them all.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

It’s a question that academics get asked over and over: What do you research?

Six Fordham professors recently took that question and answered it in video form. Working with Fordham’s OpEd Public Voices project, they recorded themselves talking about the spark that lit the proverbial flames fanning their research and submitted them to the Huffington Posts’ “The Moment I Knew” series.

The feature is a collection of user-submitted videos where readers tell the stories of life-changing moments they have experienced. And while we’d love to explain how say, Peggy Andover, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology, discovered her passion for studying non-suicidal self injury, or why Christina Greer, Ph.D., assistant professor of political science decided to write a book about black ethnic identity,perhaps it’d be best if we let them do the talking.

For their stories and those of Kristen Swinth, Ph.D., associate professor of history, Daniella Jopp, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology, Oneka LaBennett, Ph.D., assistant professor of African and African American studies and women's studies, and Susan Greenfield, Ph.D., associate professor of English, check out the “The Moment I Knew."

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

The Fordham University Association (FUA) held its annual Easter Egg Hunt on Saturday, March 31 in O’Keefe Commons at the Rose Hill campus. Approximately 160 people were in attendance, 90 of whom were children. This year’s hunt featured board member Georgi Arendacs as the Easter Bunny and John “the Magician” Turdo, who preformed an hour-long interactive magic show. Grant Grastorf, academic operational administrator at the Westchester campus and co-president of FUA, welcomed the families that attended and introduced John the Magician. All the children received gift bags containing Easter-themed crafts and gift bags containing ten colorful Easter Eggs, plus a Gold Egg with a quarter inside. A continental breakfast was donated to the hunt by Sodexo.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

That was the conclusion of research by Emily Rosenbaum, Ph.D., professor of sociology, whose report on home ownership was published in March by the Russell Sage Foundation and Brown University as part of the US2010 project.

Homeownership, in fact, saw a dramatic decrease for certain groups, between 2001 and 2011, according to Rosenbaum’s report, “Home Ownership’s Wild Ride, 2001-2011.

Between the housing-market collapse and the Great Recession, Rosenbaum found that Generations X and Y are homeowners at a lower rate than their older cohorts were at the same stage of life. In addition, Black households experienced lower rates of homeownership than their White counterparts.

Homeownership among lower income and less educated households also experienced a hit, widening the gap between the high and low socioeconomic households.

“We haven’t seen a drop in the overall home ownership rate this large since the Great Depression,” Rosenbaum wrote. “Losses were particularly large among black households, less-educated households, and households in the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution. The unequal pattern of loss considerably widened the ownership gaps between black and white households, highly educated and less-educated, and high- and low-income households.”

It was also noteworthy, Rosenbaum said, that those same groups did not participate in the surge in home ownership during the first half of the decade. Low-income households, black households and non-college-degree households saw “little change” in ownership between 2001 and 2005.

“In contrast, increases of two, three, or four points typified the experience of households headed by college graduates, non-black households, and households in the top 20 percent of the income distribution,” Rosenbaum wrote.

Rosenbaum’s findings are based on six years of data from the March Current Population Survey (CPS; 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, and 2011), capturing the periods immediately before and after the housing bubble’s burst. The full US2010 policy brief can be downloaded here: http://www.s4.brown.edu/us2010/Projects/Reports.htm

While the current organ at Rose Hill's University Church puts in one last season of musical performances during Holy Week, its replacement is coming together in a factory 2,886 miles away.

Glen Basel, design director for Schoenstein & Co., sends us these pictures from Benicia, CA, where the of the custom-made instrument is being assembled. Installation of the organ is scheduled to begin in August.

The Graduate School of Education’s (GSE) Center for Catholic School Leadership and Faith-Based Education teamed up with Catholic School Support Services of the Diocese of Brooklyn to host the 20th Annual Early Childhood Extravaganza.

Presented March 30 in Douglaston, Queens, the event drew more than 200 teachers and administrators.

“There’s an increasing understanding of the importance of early childhood education as foundational to the growth and development of the student,” said Patricia Kelly-Stiles, Ed.D., associate director for the center and a co-organizer of the event. “The diocese was most grateful that members of the GSE community were wiling to share their insights and expertise with early childhood educators.”

Kathleen Cashin, Ed.D., a clinical professor at GSE and a member of the New York State Board of Regents, gave the keynote address, “Healthy Growth of the Young Child.” In it, she emphasized the importance of helping children develop key qualities that will equip them for healthy, productive lives. She also noted how early childhood educators can nurture these qualities in children early on.

Several members of the GSE faculty and staff also presented at the event. Workshops were offered by Vincent Alfonso, Ph.D., a professor and former associate dean for academic affairs; Marilyn Bisberg, adjunct professor in GSE; Joseph Porzio, a team associate for GSE’s Partnership Support Organization; and Chun Zhang, Ph.D., a professor in GSE’s division of Curriculum and Teaching.

“Part of our work here at the University is to support the educational activities in the non-public school community, whether it be in a leadership capacity or in other areas,” Kelly-Stiles said. “[Here] we were able to share research and information on topics that were of particular interest to the early childhood educators in the Brooklyn Diocese.”